This blog is by a long-time Oracle storage professional who has history with both NetApp and EMC.

July 2010

July 22, 2010

Thanks in part to the support from my readers, my VMworld proposed talk has been approved for both VMworld San Francisco and VMworld Copenhagen. I would now love to hear from you regarding the subject I will be sharing on, i.e.: Creating an Internal Oracle Database Cloud using VMware VSphere 4.

My take is that the purpose of cloud computing is to improve cost and manageability in highly scalable environments. See, for example this article on Infoworld which defines the value proposition of cloud computing as well as any I have seen. For Oracle on VMware, I think that cloud computing makes sense in the following contexts:

Software as a Service (SaaS). This example is familiar to many of us. For example, I use an application called Concur ExpenseLink to plan travel and expenses relating to my business. This is a database-enable application which is accessed over the internet. While this application is certainly an example of SaaS in itself, it is also undoubtedly backed up by a large farm of Oracle or some other database servers. Within the context of the provider of this service (American Express in this case), it would make sense for the IT group within that company to provide the database as a cloud internally. That way, additional capacity could be added easily and inexpensively.

Server sprawl. I see this example in a large number of customers. Basically, the IT organization in this enterprise allowed the various business functions to evolve in a rather random manner. As a result, the IT infrastructure is filled with isolated servers, each of which is a potential point of failure, and a very expensive, underutilized resource as well.

These usage cases both seem very obvious to me, in terms of creating an internal database cloud. In both cases, cost, utilization, and manageability are all improved by a cloud approach.

But other usage cases could be conceived of. That's where you come in.

First, I would love to hear from any of you who are currently implementing something similar to a cloud computing approach within VMware for your Oracle environment.

Second, if you know of another usage case different from what I show above that you think is interesting or compelling, I would love to know that as well. Please feel free to comment to this post.

I will be in San Francisco next month. Please come see me speak, and visit with me in the EMC booth. I will be there all week. And for my European followers, I will be in Copenhagen in October. I will update you here on how things progress.

disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. I am a blogger who works at EMC, not an EMC blogger. This is my blog, and not EMC's. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by EMC and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of EMC.